Psychiatry research
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Anorexia Nervosa (AN) patients have a disturbed experience of body size and shape. Previously it has been shown that these body representation disturbances extend to enlarged perception of tactile distances. Here we investigated whether misperception of tactile size could be related to inaccurate elementary somatosensory perception. ⋯ Our results show that AN patients have a disturbance in the metric properties of the mental representation of their body as they overestimate the size of tactile stimuli compared to controls. Interestingly, AN patients and controls differ in elementary somatosensory perception as well. However, this could not solely explain misperception of tactile distances, suggesting that both bottom-up and top-down processes are involved.
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Psychiatry research · Dec 2012
The impact of intra- and postoperative albumin levels as a biomarker of delirium after cardiopulmonary bypass: results of an exploratory study.
In this prospective study the frequency of delirium after cardiac surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) was determined. Furthermore, we investigated the impact of intra- and postoperative levels of albumin as a biomarker of delirium. Thirty-four patients who underwent elective CPB at the Department of Cardiac Surgery, Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, Germany, were enroled in this prospective study. ⋯ The albumin level decreased during the surgical intervention and increased postoperatively with a maximum level at the time of discharge. CPB patients with delirious state showed a significantly lower albumin level 24h and 48h postoperatively than those without delirium. A low level of postoperative albumin seems to be a useful biomarker to identify patients with high risk of delirious state after CPB.
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Psychiatry research · Nov 2012
Emotional intelligence in anorexia nervosa: is anxiety a missing piece of the puzzle?
Problematic emotional processing has been implicated in the genesis and maintenance of anorexia nervosa (AN). This study built on existing research and explored performance-based emotional intelligence (EI) in people with AN. The Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) was administered to 32 women diagnosed with AN and 32 female healthy controls (HC). ⋯ This study adds to the literature documenting the socioemotional phenotype of AN, suggesting this group of individuals may find it relatively difficult to carry out accurate reasoning about emotions, and to use emotions and emotional knowledge to enhance thought. Anxiety was highlighted as a putative variable partially explaining why people with AN demonstrated lower EI compared to controls. Implications for further research are discussed, including the need to explore the specificity of EI difficulties in AN using larger samples and additional control groups.
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Psychiatry research · Nov 2012
Reduced volume in the anterior internal capsule but its maintained correlation with the frontal gray matter in subjects at ultra-high risk for psychosis.
The anterior limb of the internal capsule (ALIC), which interconnects with the frontal cortex and thalamus, is volumetrically altered in schizophrenia patients. However, it is unclear whether an abnormal ALIC volume is apparent prior to the onset of schizophrenia and whether this aberrant ALIC volume is related to the frontal gray matter in individuals at ultra-high risk (UHR) for psychosis. We used magnetic resonance imaging of 43 UHR subjects, 36 schizophrenia patients, and 42 healthy controls to investigate manually traced ALIC volumes. ⋯ A positive correlation between the volumes in the ALIC and frontal gray matter found in healthy controls was maintained only in UHR subjects. In addition, a negative correlation between the total scores on the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale and the ALIC volumes was observed only in schizophrenia patients. An aberrant ALIC volume but its maintained correlation with the interconnecting frontal lobe was present prior to the onset of full psychosis, indicating the prodromal phase of psychosis.
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Psychiatry research · Nov 2012
Depression, anxiety, and stress as predictors of postconcussion-like symptoms in a non-clinical sample.
This study examined the relationship between postconcussion-like symptoms and depressive symptoms, anxiety and stress respectively. Seventy-one university students with a negative concussion history completed the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS) and the British Columbia Postconcussion Symptom Inventory (BC-PSI). A multiple regression was conducted using the three DASS subscale scores as predictors of postconcussion-like symptoms. ⋯ Anxiety was not a significant multivariate predictor. These results suggest that stress may be a more important predictor of postconcussion-like symptoms than previously identified. Findings are interpreted in light of Iverson (2012) conceptual model of poor outcomes from mild traumatic brain injury.